“Trust in journalism has been declining for a generation,” says a study on the state of the US news media by the Project for Excellence in Journalism:
“Only 5% of stories on cable news contain new information, the report found. Most were simply rehashes of the same facts. There was also less fact checking than in the past and less policing of journalistic standards.
Quality news and information were more available than ever before, but so was the trivial, the one-sided and the false.
Consumers with the time and patience to distinguish between many different sources of news might be better informed, but many were likely to find news outlets that echoed their own view of the world without providing alternative viewpoints.”
Distrust in the media goes far beyond the Jayson Blairs and Jack Kelleys. It’s affecting the very institution itself.
For example, in Canada, all mainstream media are owned by just five companies – Rogers, CanWest, Bell Globemedia, Quebecor and Torstar. This is what is known as “media ownership concentration”, and many believe it is unhealthy for so few people to have such influence over the public voice.
CanWest has already decreed that at least one editorial per week be sanctioned and generated from their Winnipeg corporate headquarters and appear in all 14 of their newspapers. “CanWest